Chapter Eleven

NAPPING WITH ELI is one of Alex’s favorite things in the entire world.

Eli isn’t clingy, but he doesn’t seem to mind Alex’s predilection for wrapping around him like a body pillow. Which means Alex wakes up in the exact position he fell asleep: warm and happy and with his mouth against the vertebra of Eli’s neck, just beneath the fuzz of his hairline. Alex leaves a sloppy kiss there, because he can, and then eases his way out of bed and into the bathroom.

Where he promptly remembers he’s about to go play his first NHL game as an out gay man under the watchful eyes of a sold-out stadium and hundreds of thousands of TV viewers.

He leans against the counter and takes a minute to breathe.

Then another minute.

Possibly a third.

The duvet crinkles in the bedroom, and he hears Eli talking briefly to Bells before telling Hawk to go get her harness. Alex listens as Eli buckles her into it and makes his way out of the bedroom. Then Alex glances toward the not-quite-closed bathroom door as Bells shoulders it open and joins him, a little judgmental at his hunched-over position.

She jumps up onto the counter, knocks her head against his wrist briefly, and settles herself primly in the bowl of the sink.

“Okay,” he says firmly. “I should get ready.”

Bells blinks approvingly at him.

Alex straightens, rubs his knuckles once over Bells’s bony eyebrows, and goes to change into his nicest game-day suit.

He can’t control what the media will say about him tonight, but he can make damn sure he looks fantastic in any of the photos they publish.

When he makes his way back out to the living room, shoes shined and hair at least sort of gelled into submission, Eli has a Hozier record on and is doing something that seems needlessly aggressive to a chicken breast.

Alex just watches him for a while; he has a few minutes before he needs to leave, and there’s something innately calming about the way Eli moves around a kitchen, even when he has to pause every now and then to find his balance—to brace his hand against the counter or lean into Hawk.

When he’s finished brutalizing the chicken, he adds it to a pan that’s already making low, spatter-y cooking noises; “simmering” is the word? Maybe? Alex is trying to build his cooking vocabulary, but it’s a work in progress. Eli then moves to preheat the oven.

Alex’s phone buzzes with a text, letting him know his driver is in the parking garage, and he takes a bolstering breath.

It’s not really effective.

He comes up behind Eli as he’s opening the fridge, wraps his hand around Eli’s on the handle, presses his opposite palm flat to the face of the freezer door and then just…holds him there: The front of Alex’s body tucked flush to his back. Head ducked. Nose crushed almost uncomfortably into the side of his neck.

“Oh,” Eli says. “Well, hello.”

Alex breathes him in.

And then exhales.

Slowly.

“Hey,” he says, maybe a little sheepishly.

“Hey,” Eli agrees. “You okay?”

“I am now.”

“Okay.”

Eli closes the refrigerator, turns so they’re face-to-face, and leans back against it. “Do you want me to ride with you to the arena?”

“No. Jessica said there will probably be protestors. You don’t need to see that.”

“Neither do you,” Eli says quietly.

And then he pets the side of Alex’s face. Gently. Like Alex is someone who deserves gentleness.

Alex clears his throat. “No,” he says again. “Really. It’s fine. You stay and don’t overexert yourself. Call Cody. Take a long bath.” He pauses. “Maybe not at the same time.”

Eli rolls his eyes and mutters something about him being a possessive moron.

“I’m a possessive moron that ordered a box full of new Lush products for you to try. They’re in the cabinet.”

Eli braces his hands on Alex’s shoulders and very carefully goes up onto his toes to kiss Alex’s nose. “FYI, you can’t just buy your way back into my good graces when you’re being problematic. But thank you.”

It’s a joke. Alex knows it’s a joke because Eli is still smiling at him. But there’s an undertone that makes Alex think maybe they’re going to need a conversation about his gift-giving proclivities soon.

He’s not looking forward to it.

Maybe he should ask Rads for advice.

“Okay,” he agrees. “I should go.”

“Hey.” Eli laces his fingers behind Alex’s neck. “Whatever happens tonight, I love you.”

Alex kisses him.

Takes his time.

Commits it to memory so he can think about it later, when things inevitably go to shit.

“Love you too,” Eli says.

*

JESSICA WAS RIGHT.

There are protestors.

He thought he was prepared for it, but he really isn’t. At all. Not because it’s horrifying or anything, but because it’s absolute madness. The entire street in front of the arena is filled with people, easily double, maybe even triple the normal amount of pregame pedestrian traffic. There are police barricades and people with signs and flags and bullhorns. Except he realizes very quickly as the car creeps through traffic along the boulevard that a good portion of the crowd, maybe even a majority of them, is decked out, not in Hell Hounds reds, blacks, and whites, or even Coyote reds and tans, but all sorts of colors. Pinks and neon-greens and turquoises.

Rainbow colors.

People are wearing tie-dyed jerseys. Homemade shirts. Dresses. Kilts.

There are kids on shoulders with glittery rainbow faces and women wearing pride flags like capes.

There are several men in full-body paint posing for pictures together at one of the police barricades while a giant, bearded guy in Alex’s winter classic jersey and a pink tutu juggles his beer and a phone to take the photos.

There’s a pair of (probably) teenagers in rainbow morph suits, dirty dancing in front of a man with a sign about Alex going to hell.

And yeah, sure, there’s definitely that: the requisite God Hates Gays posters and a guy screaming through a bullhorn about the wages of sin being death. There are a cluster of people who proudly hold aloft tatters of what used to be Price jerseys. There are signs with slurs and badly photoshopped pictures of Alex and angry, red-faced, middle-aged men shaking them in people’s faces. But.

They’re the minority.

Alex was never good at math, but. They’re the minority.

He laughs a little hysterically as a woman dips her girlfriend? wife? convenient bystander? and kisses her right in front of one protestor, both of them flipping the man off.

Alex has to sit back in the seat and close his eyes and breathe a little.

“Mr. Price?” the driver says a few minutes later.

Shawn? Alex thinks his name is Shawn. Shawn deserves a substantial tip when this is over.

“Yeah?” Alex says.

“We’re here.”

Alex steps out of the car in the parking garage to find Jessica waiting for him.

She’s in her usual black suit, but there’s a tiny rainbow maple leaf pin on her lapel.

Normally Alex would make a Canadian joke, but he doesn’t.

He just. Hugs her. Quickly.

And doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t know if he can without his voice doing something embarrassing.

And he thinks: maybe this won’t be a disaster after all.

*

IT’S A DISASTER.

The game is an absolute disaster.

And it’s not even really the Coyote’s fault.

Well, it is. A couple of them are opportunistic douchebags. And the refs certainly aren’t helping as it seems they’ve been rendered temporarily deaf and blind. But the primary reason the Hell Hounds are down by two at the end of the first is entirely because his team has lost their fucking minds.

Jeff gets four minutes for slashing less than a minute into the game after Booker hisses something at Alex that contains multiple slurs.

Kuzy joins him in the box for high-sticking thirty seconds later.

Rads gets in an all-out brawl with a defenseman after they have an exchange in front of the goal, and Rushy probably would have joined in if a ref hadn’t dragged him by the tail of his jersey back into the crease.

Asher gets five for fighting.

Rads gets four for slashing.

Kuzy gets ten for misconduct after Alex gets cross-checked in the head and the refs don’t call it and Kuzy decides to take justice into his own hands. “Justice” apparently being immediate death. Right there on the ice.

Jeff gets five for fighting.

They’re playing three on five for over half the first period, Coach is well on his way to an aneurysm, and the only reason the Coyotes haven’t racked up more points is because of Rushy, who looks equally ready to drop his gloves at any moment.

When time runs out and they file into the locker room, cursing, Alex throws his helmet and, with a nod from Coach, yells:

“What. The actual. Fuck.”

The guys all mutter about the asshole Coyotes and the fucking refs, and no one will meet his eyes.

“I said,” Alex starts lowly, “to treat this like any other game. Coach said to treat this like any other game. Jessica said to be on your best behavior because this game will be under extreme scrutiny, and you—”

“But Booker—” Asher starts.

“I know. I know what Booker’s been saying, and Nooks, and Pevs, and I’m ignoring it.”

“But we can’t let them get away with it!” Asher says, a flush riding high on his cheekbones. “It’s bullshit!

“Yeah!” a rookie agrees. “The refs aren’t doing anything, and the things they’re saying—”

“None of this is new,” Alex yells, and several of those who had started to object go quiet.

“None of it,” he repeats. “I’ve been hearing the same fucking shit since I was in peewee. Hell, I’ve said worse on the ice than the things I’ve heard tonight, and I’m pretty damn sure everyone in this room has as well at some point in their careers.”

“I haven’t,” Jeff says mulishly, tonguing the cut on his lip.

Everyone ignores him.

“Well, yeah,” Matts says. “But never to someone who was actually gay.”

Alex just stares at him until Matts realizes how stupid that just sounded.

“Look,” Alex says, running a hand through his hair. “Someone tries to check me in the head and the refs don’t call it? Fine. Punch their fucking teeth out.”

Kuzy preens.

“But in the second period, I don’t want to see a single person draw a penalty for anything less than that. If teams realize that talking shit about me results in our entire second line in the box for—for defending my honor or some shit, we are going to lose every single game we play from here on out. If I can ignore the shit being said about me, you can too.”

“Or not ignore,” Kuzy says. “Talk back. Make, uh—” He consults quietly with Oshie for a moment, then, “Make them uncomfortable. So they stop.”

“What do you mean?” Alex asks guardedly.

“Example. Little angry forward—long hair?”

“Peverly,” Alex supplies, sighing.

He’d actually played with Pevs in juniors. Nooks too. He’d thought they were good guys.

“Okay. Peverly says bad things, beginning of period against the boards when I’m fight him for puck. He says Alex bad captain—blah blah. And I’m say yes, Alex very bad captain. I ask, every day, for threesome with Alex and Eli, and Alex say no. Because he’s jealous. If we threesome, Eli knows I’m best at sex, and then Eli like me most, and then Alex is sad and alone and only cat loves him—”

“Oh my god,” Alex says. “Seriously?”

Kuzy looks pleased with himself, shrugging. “It worked! He’s shut up, now.”

“I like that,” Asher muses. “Can we do that?”

“Sure,” Alex says, resigned. “Whatever. Just no more penalties.”

“Unless they hurt you,” Kuzy reminds him, picking torn skin from his knuckles.

“Right,” Alex sighs. “Unless they hurt me.”

“Then we punch their fucking teeth out,” Rads agrees.

Coach sighs, louder than Alex, and shakes his head. “Okay, boys, focus. Let’s talk about the second period.”

*

ALEX IS THINKING about what Kuzy said when he lines up for the first face-off of the second period with Booker. He’s been ignoring him so far, but…

“Fucking cocksucker,” Booker hisses.

And.

Well.

Alex glances at the ref who is still pointedly pretending he can’t hear them.

“Uh, yeah?” Alex says, tightening his grip on his stick. “I’d be a pretty shitty boyfriend if I wasn’t.”

Booker’s face goes blank. “What?”

“It’s not like it’s a hardship, though, let me tell you. Eli’s dick? Very nice, as far as dicks go. A little bigger than you’d expect for someone his size but not too big, you know?”

“The fuck?”

“And he’s definitely a grower, not a shower, which threw me off at first because I’m not a size queen or anything, but I have to admit—”

“Jesus,” Booker says viciously. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Hey man, you brought it up. Anyway. Back to Eli’s dick.”

Booker loses the face-off.

Booker also retreats to stony silence, and Alex finds himself grinning for most of the rest of the game. Because, firstly, they quickly tally two points in the second to tie, but secondly, he keeps hearing little snatches of conversations:

Like Rushy shouting advice to anyone near the net on where to get good sex toys in town since clearly the Coyotes are a little too keyed up and need to get laid—even if it’s only by themselves.

Or Asher talking about the pros and cons of oil versus water-based lubricant—possibly unprovoked—to a rookie as they battle over the puck.

Or Jeff inquiring if a red-faced defender might himself have latent homosexual desires judging by his apparent obsession with the male phallus.

They win the game.

And when the buzzer sounds, seconds after Alex’s empty-net goal, Alex just stands at center ice for a second, leaning on his stick, smiling so hard it hurts.

No one is leaving the stands.

It’s a wall of colorful noise—so many people standing up and screaming and—

He doesn’t think he’s ever heard the Houston arena this loud before.

Jeff crashes into him a few seconds before Kuzy and then Asher and then Rads and then there’s a pile of Hell Hounds on top of him all yelling indistinctly like they’ve won game seven in a tied-up playoff run.

He loves his team so much.

“Hey,” Jeff says, catching Alex in a headlock so he can yell in his ear. “Looks like your boy is here.”

“My what?”

Jeff points, and some of the other guys start howling and—

Yes.

Eli is on the Jumbotron sitting next to Jo in one of the private boxes, wearing sunglasses and hearing protection and smiling so wide it looks like it hurts.

Alex knows the feeling.

Alex points to him with his stick, and Eli stands, a little slow, a little shaky. Alex doesn’t understand what he’s doing at first until Eli has turned to show his back to the camera.

He’s wearing Alex’s jersey.

Price 23.

Eli grins over his shoulder, and the stadium maybe gets even louder.

And oh.

Alex didn’t know it was possible to love someone this much.